


The Godfather

by saiansha



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Irondad, May Parker (Spider-Man) - Freeform, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), morgan stark - Freeform, spiderson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 10:33:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18715273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiansha/pseuds/saiansha
Summary: After the funeral, Pepper Potts and Peter Parker discuss the father-son relationship between Tony and Peter.





	The Godfather

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jessicagoddamnjones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicagoddamnjones/gifts).



> Written for jessicagoddamnjones as a birthday gift. Happy birthday, sweetheart <3 I hope you like it. Pepper and Peter aren't my forte, and it's the first time I'm writing Peter and Irondad-Spiderson, but I hope you enjoy it even a little.

“I want a cheesburger!” Morgan cried.

“Honey, you already had a cheesburger for lunch,” Pepper said patiently, but it was clear she was at her wits’ end.

“I don’t care! I want another!” the girl protested. 

Pepper shot Happy a reproachful look, blaming him for telling Morgan that her dad used to love cheeseburgers as well.

“Mor-Mor,” Happy tried, “I’ll get you another cheeseburger tomorrow. But could you eat a proper dinner tonight, sweetie?”

“I want a cheesburger!” the girl shrieked.

It was May Parker who saved the day.

“Sweetie,” she lowered herself so that she was on eye-level with the child, “How about we eat spaghetti and _cheeseburger_ meatballs tonight?”

The girl’s frown lifted as she processed the words, intrigued. “What is that?”

“Well, it is the best of both worlds,” May grinned, which Morgan imitated.

“Okay!” Morgan approved and May tugged her along to the kitchen, sensing that Pepper needed a little reprieve.

If only spaghetti and cheeseburgers and meatballs were enough to distract adults.

Happy took his leave soon after, leaving Pepper Potts and Peter Parker alone in the living room. It was Peter who broke the silence.

“Miss Potts,” he began.

“Call me Pepper, please.”

Peter thought it over. He tested it out internally, imagining how it would be like to call her Pepper. It felt weird. He had always called Mr. Stark ‘Mr. Stark,’ after all.

“Can I – can I call you ‘Ms. Potts?’” Peter asked softly.

She gave him a wan smile that tugged at his heart. Briefly, he wondered if Mr. Stark had called her ‘Ms. Potts’ too. He decided that was a silly thought, for he had called her Pepper as well. He wondered if he should call her ‘Virginia,’ but that might be even weirder. He realised he was overthinking this and there was no right answer.

“If you insist,” she said.

Against his usual tendencies, he decided to let the matter drop. “Thank you for letting May and I stay over tonight. It’s a long drive home. But I promise, we’ll be out of your hair early in the morning tomorrow!”

“Oh, it’s hardly an issue! Like you said, it’s a long drive home. It’s a pleasure, really. He – he would’ve liked it too,” she said and her voice wavered. She managed to blink away the tears, but the redness of her eyes and the flush of her face were fooling no one.

“Ms. Potts, I –”

“He would’ve liked it very much,” she nodded, as if that was the final word.

They stared at each other awkwardly, not sure how to proceed or how to share their mutual, yet different grief. Then, she cleared her throat and turned towards the kitchen.

“How rude of me! Your aunt’s a guest and yet she’s in the kitchen, that too while entertaining Morgan!”

She made a dash for the kitchen but Peter jumped in.

“Ms. Potts, please! It’s fine! May knows what she’s doing and she doesn’t mind!”

“But, she’s a guest!” Pepper repeated.

“Yeah, but… she’s fine, really. You’ve been on your feet all day and you need someone to take care of you too. Let us help you, just a little, please.”

Pepper’s mouth opened and closed rapidly, and then her jaw clenched. Peter was worried if she was going to have a breakdown, but then she spoke.

“You’re a sweet boy. I can see why he likes you.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he just settled on blushing and staring at his shoes while digging his hands into his pockets. He had always liked suits, but both the occasions on which he’d worn them had not led to pleasant events, and he wondered if he’d been turned off them for life.

“Would you to go sit in the porch for a bit? It’s really something to see the sun set and the last rays catch over the water.”

He nodded eagerly. She made to follow him, but then suddenly stopped and in her tracks and turned around. He stopped as well.

“Go on,” she said. “I’ll join you in a bit.”

He nodded again and went to the porch. He sat down on one of the benches tiredly, admiring the view. Pepper was right; the view really was something. The orange light gently caressed the water, the lush grass and the lilies, lavenders and pansies growing on the banks. The leaves and petals were swaying in the gentle breeze. Were they mourning as well? Though he knew better, he imagined that the disc they had lowered into the water had only just now reached the edge and any second now, it would be beamed up into the orange sunlight, just like he had been beamed up on to a spaceship a little while ago. Or should he say five years ago?

He wasn’t sure anymore. 

He was broken out of his contemplation when Pepper settled next to him. She stared straight ahead, fidgeting with an upside down photo whose back was the only thing visible.

“He loved you, you know,” she finally said, her voice hoarse. “He really loved you.”

Peter fisted his pants. “I – I know,” he said, pushing through the painful lump in his throat. “And I loved him too. He was like a father to me. He _was_ a father to me.”

She nodded. “I didn’t really understand it at first. Sure, he liked you and saw your potential and wanted to watch out for you. But then I realised he saw in you some hope for himself. He finally saw a way he could get out – he saw that he could be a father. More importantly, he saw he could be a _good_ father, or at least, a better father.”

He processed the words in silence. Mr. Stark had definitely gone above and beyond being a mere mentor to him, but he had never known much about the older man’s early life. But hearing these words from Ms. Potts made him feel the weight of his mistakes, and the disappointment that followed, all the more clearly.

“I’m afraid I wasn’t the best son to him. I’m sorry. He tried to teach me a lot, but I don’t think I learned it all.”

“He wasn’t a perfect father either. But he learned from you. Every time he did something wrong, then retrace his steps, then do it again, I could almost hear him rewind and replay his interactions with you. Whatever the certificates and documents might say, Peter, you were always his first child.”

Peter gasped, unable to control his sobs this time. Two big drops of tears fell on to his legs and stained the dark fabric.

“Here,” Pepper said, herself sounding close to tears now.

She flipped over the photo and showed it to him. It was of him and Mr. Stark, taken when he had finally got the 'Stark Internship' for real. He squeezed his eyes shut and swayed in his spot. He was able to bear weight five thousand times greater than his own mass, but he was helpless against this onslaught of anguish.

“This was what prompted him to take the leap. This was what prompted him to return,” she said. “The thought of Morgan and me held him back, but the thought of him propelled him onward. And now – and now I regret not stopping him. I regret letting him go. I regret not protesting. How could he abandon us? How could he leave the daughter who had been his child in every sense of the word, whom he had raised for five years for _you_?”

Saying so, she finally broke down, shattering the iron composure she’d held throughout the day, throughout the past few weeks even. Of course she blamed him, and she was right to. If it weren’t for him, she’d probably still have her husband and little Morgan her father. It was because of him, he realised with sickening dread, that Morgan was going to grow up like him – fatherless.

“But, then I realise,” she continued, to his surprise, “that he would’ve done it anyway, no matter what I’d said, because it was the right thing to do. The good thing to do. And I don’t love you the way he loved you, Peter,” she said, turning to face him, “but if I did, I would’ve done the same.”

His own tears flowing fully now, he said, “Ms. Potts, if there was any way I could… anything I could do…” he trailed off, not sure he would bring Mr. Stark back, but knowing that he would try his damndest if there was any way.

“There is,” she said, her voice inching back to normal. She gently pried one of his hands away from his leg and on to her lap. Then, she placed the photo in his palm. “I don’t blame you, Peter, and you shouldn’t either. Tony always did what he wanted and we all have to live with that, for better or for worse. But there are two things you can do. First, you can take this photo. It is your memory. You should be the one to keep it.”

He sobbed silently, overwhelmed by both relief that she didn’t blame him, but also his own guilt and regret.

“And secondly, I want you to be Morgan’s godfather.”

“Ms. Potts?” he asked, so taken aback that his sobs quietened.

She smiled sadly at him, yet there was no doubt in her eyes. “Morgan will be able to feel her father’s presence through the eyes of all our friends who would love to tell her every little detail about what Tony was like. But she can only love her father through the eyes of someone else who loved him like a father. Someone else who had grown up without a father and someone else who was his child.” She encased both his hands in her own and added, “You taught him to be a better father, a _good_ father. He would have wanted this.” 

“But, Ms. Potts, I – I – I don’t think – I don’t know – I" 

“Tony believed in you. And though it’s taken me years to realise this and to come to terms with this, I believed – I _believe_ – in him. Will you be Morgan’s godfather, Mr. Parker?”

Peter swallowed. His heart was racing mile a minute and he still wasn’t sure that he deserved the honour or the responsibility. But if there had ever been a time that he had felt that something was the absolute right thing to do, then this was it. He nodded.

“Thank you, Peter,” Pepper smiled.

Then, unable to control himself any longer, he said, “Ms. Potts? Can I hug you?”

She stared at him for a second then half-laughed, half-sobbed as she exclaimed, “Of course you may, my dear child!”

And like a child returning home after far too long, he dived in and bawled into her arms. She cried with him, her tears falling freely on to his shoulders and her hands stroking his back, occasionally ruffling his hair as she dropped a comforting kiss on his head. And that was how May found her son and nephew, and Morgan her new godfather, when they came to invite the two to a wholesome dinner of spaghetti and cheeseburger meatballs.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos, comments and constructive criticism are always more-than welcome <3


End file.
